Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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growth of population which began in the 1740$ and only petered out during (he last few years owed little, at any rate in its early stages, to a decline in the mortality rate. Medicine, therefore, can have liad no part in the beginnings of the great demographic
transition.
CHAPTER i$ Madness
The bcnchciat cttt'cts of the iiiedical profession arc now thrown inio doubt, and scientists generally are no longer regarded simply as wise men battling the mysterious forces of nature with supremely
elegant coiiceptual thinking, and incredibly patient and exacting testing and rctesting of data. Newton is now known to have been
PART I
as concerned to establish the measurements of the temple of Solomon or to unravel the meaning of the Book of Revelation as lie was to elucidate the laws of gravity or optics. James Watson's
frank disclosures in The Double Helix of the strength of personal During the last fifteen years, a series of semi-indepenileni intellectual trends have come together to transform the history of what society has thought about madness and how it has treated those it considers mad. Once upon a time, the history of medicine was regarded, like that of pure science, as largely 'internalist,' a story of how a progressive endeavor by a handful of gifted intellectuals slowly replaced superstition and errcft- by empirical proven truth. More recently, however, historians have begun to fit the protagonisis in these ancient intellectual battles more deeply into their social settings. In the process, they have revealed a wcltcr of unproven pseudo-scientific theories, professional or national rivalries, insticuiiunal jealousies, personal and protussional ambitions, cultural conditioning, sexist and racist prejiidicus, political exigencies, economic incentives to save money, and religious biases, out of which new and powerful scientific and medical paradigms have emerged. Some now argue that medic,il progress has been a power grab by the medical profession, and institution.}! treatment tor the purpose of better care has been relabeled the 'great cQnfinement.' It is now credibly believed that hospitals were lethal death traps before Pasteur demonstrated the importance of a sterile envirunment. It is now also generally recognized that doctors may presumably unwittingly - have killed more patients than they cured, certainly before the early nineteenth century, and maybe
before the invention of antibiotics in the mid-twentieth, and that
ambition as a compelling motive behind scientific research has forever destroyed the image of the detached scholar selflessly dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Tlie self-evident fact that exploitation by politicians of (he recent discoveries of nuclear physicists is quite likely to result some time in the next few decades in the destruction ot civilization, and possibly of most life on earth, merely reinforces this atmosphere of cynicisni and suspicion. The second trend has been a turning away from the history of elites, whether intellectual or political, to the history of the poor and downirodden, a trend in which the nature of surviving documenucion has in<;vi.tably also led po a focusing on social 'deviancs,'
such as homosexuals, criminals, and the insane. One effect of this
more catholic approach has been,'in the case of the history of medicine, no longer to limit it to the study of orthodox medicine (as practiced, in England, by the members of the Society of Apothccaries and the Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons) bui to iiicluLlc also popular medicine, which antcdates Galen and continues to tliis day to be far more widely usutl than orthodoxy likes to admil. Sume otits practitioners were wise women, white witches, whose full significance has only emerged as a byproduct of yet another contemporary trend, a sudden revival of interest in the irrational in general and witchcraft in particular. Today the distinction between magic and science is no longer as clear-cut as it used to be, now that seventeenth-century science is seen as
their most valuable contribution to public welfare was psychological reassurance that help was on its way. The most ambitious attempt ever made to examine the
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emerging from a strange brew compouncic$l of Hermcticism, alchemy, and astrology. Finally, interest in problems associated with madness and its treatment have been stimulated by the writings ofMichel Foucault.-'
society under management by professionally trained doctors? If this is so, was it merely the result of a conspiracy of professionals
in society, to lock them up and throw away the key. It was part of what he calls 'the great confinement,' other parts beins the extensive growth of workhouses, schools, and prisons. In the eighteenth century, he says, the mad replaced the medieval lepcrs in
isolation hospitals on the outskirts of cities. There is, he claims, an places of isolation were the same.
into institutions at least partly in order to save them from exposure to great cruelties at the hands of the public or their families. In any case, the few dangerously mnci had been locked up in cages like animals from at least the late Middle Ages. Far from being isolated,
the twenty-odd mnnacled mndmen gibbering and rattling their chains in their filthy cn^cs in Bedlam were one of the great tourist attractions of London from the early sixteenth century to the early nineteenth. It was one of the standard sights of the city, on a par
identical attitude of mind behind the treatment of the two, and the
devising ways to reform criminals nr cure madmen through incarceration have proved a gigantic failure. Today no one really knows
what to do with either, except to lock up the former and drug the
latter. Yet the residual belief remains that a test of the moral worth
of a society is the way it treats its more impotent members, the indigent, the sick, and the mad. The battle has thus been**joined between post-Enlightenment optimism about the power of society to provide remedies for human pain and suffering, and a cynical and in America with President Johnson's 'Great Society.' Today,
in 1982, there has rc-emerged the older, more pessimistic view thnt
suspicion that any change is liable to be for the worse. The former effort reached its apogee in the mid-twentieth-century welfare state,
nothing much can or should be done, and that whatever is done is
It has also been pointed out that there were enormous differences in the degree and orpanizntion of incarceration from country to country, England leading the way in private madhouses in the eighteenth century, and France in huge state-supported institutions. Moreover, the chronology is complicated, since the poor were the first to be incarcerated in large numbers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the mad only in the nineteenth. In England in 1810, the total number of mad persons in confinement was only 2,500 out of a population of 9 million, or about 30 per 100,000, and the numbers did not begin to rise rapidly until the
i8}os.
donors. So far as the mad are concerned, we are just about where we were five hundred years ago, when, in about 1450, a Lord
Mayor of London concluded that 'some be restored unto their wit
Foucault's comparison of treatment of the mad during the early modern period and that of lcpers during the Middle Ages does not
stand up to close examination. Early modern madhouses were not
and health again. And some be abiding therein for ever, for they
be fallen so much out of themselves that it is incurable unto men.'11
During the year 1788, for example, Bedlam held 282 different
inmates, but it admitted 219 and discharged 20$.'' This transit camp of the mind, with its constant turnover, was entirely unlike the
lifelong prison of the medieval leprosarium. Finally, Foucault's attempt to link the treatment of schoolchil-
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tlrcn, the poor, criminals, and tlic ins.inc under n sinKlc conccptii.il
umbrella, since all were subject to confinement, is both iinhistoric.il
and misleading. No serious sctioliir would doubt thnt the poor, in or oiit of workliouscs, have been sub,st;intinlly relieved of tlic
crushing burden of indi^cncc in the Inst two hundred vcnrs, or tli.u children, at lenst up to the it^rto.s, n-crc incrcnsinpty better cduc.itcd.
nnd thus better prcp.irctl to take their place in society nnd better able to improve their chances in life. Moreover, poor parents
willingly paid money to send their children to school, since they
It also undercuts the basis of the whole lihcral enterprise of the last two hundred ycnrs, which has done so much to diminish man's personal and legnl inhumanity to mnn. One has only to read how the medical profession treated Kinp George III when he went mad cnca.sin;.; his body in m.ichinery, chaining him to a stake, bc.itin;.; him, st.irvinp him. thrc-itcnins him, blistering and bleeding him,
giving him digitalis, tartar cmctic, and other noxious medicines to recoRniy.e that the shift to 'moral' treatment of the insane was a
great. It is not enough to advance the valid argument that more humane trcntment ot the insane depended on the revolutionary notion that the loss of reason was neither irreparable nor a cause to treat a humnn bein;!; like nn animal, and that the cure depended on (renting the mind r.ither than the body. It is perfectly true that
theory determines treatment, but the wide extent of the humnnitarinn trcntl is still undeniable.
possible by the decline of religious faith in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which opened the way to a more secular yiew of human ills and their possible nmelioration. Sins against the Floly
Ghost and violations of God's law such as heresy now took a lower
Foucnult and his followers ar^uc that it was the doctors who
were behind the great confinement of the insane, whereas in fact a
better case can be mndc that they were merely responding to social demand. Society was willing and anxious to pay for incarceration. The private mndhouses that sprung up all over England in the eiphtcenth century were run by entrepreneurs who supplied an
expensive need of society. Large numbers of well-to-do families were now willinp to pay to have their ment.illy defective children,
Western Europe resulted in the substitution of imprisonment for torture, mutilation, or death as the main punishment of poor criminnl.s; tlie .ibolition of the slave tr.idc; the reform of condition.s in
push more than pull at work in the creation of the English private madhou.ses of the early eiphteenth century, and even more in the buildins of the liupc public asylums of the early nineteenth centurv.
Moreover, nil the children in schnol, ns well as the in.sanc in
the prisons, which reduced opportunities for hideous cruelty (as well as those for en.sy-poin;; tolerance of irrcpularities); the reduction and final abolition of the appnllinp flopgin^s (up to 1,000
m.idhoii'ics, were paid for by their rcl.itive.s or by the parish under the conviction, often fulfilled, thnt the experience would do them
good. As for the helpless poor, some of whom were confined in
workhouses, it is hard for nnvone who has read about their
In.shcs) which were common in the nrmccl forces; and the introductinn of moral therapeutic mcthud.'; of treatment of the insane.
conditions in ciphtccnth-ccntury London or in France to believe that their lot has not improved since the age of confinement. This leaves only the poor criminals, and even they, if asked, would
baited bears, that denial nt its reality flies in the face of the evidence.
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which accords with only some of the historical facts.'1' Abstract nnd
metaphoric in expression, unconcerned with historical detail of time nnd plnce or with ri{;ot-ous document.ition, Professor
theory, and threw him out by the use of cxorcism, a magical process using the Euch.irist .ind other sacred objects and words to put the
devil to flipht; nnd the trentmcnt often worked. Protestants, who
believed that miracles li.id ceased with the apostles, had no such
remedies to offer to the possessed.
Medical pr.ictitioncr.s hastened to fill the void, for example in 1589 when the Throckmorton children were diagnosed by Dr
Barrow of Cambridpe University as bewitched, on the basis merely of a urine specimen. The children caused the executions of three
members of a family as witches, before 'these abominable little
girls,' as Dr Walker rightly calls them, decided that the game had
gone on Ion;; enough. Belief in possession was closely linked to
belief in witchcraft. In 1600 a number of English writers were There nre several possible ways of tackling the history of madness. One is by in.stitutionnl histories of the places of confinement, the private madhouscs and their successors the public asylums. Another
casting serious doubts upon possession as anything more than a mixture of melancholy and ambition for notoriety by young girls, working upon n popular belief in the stereotype of the witch as 'an old wenther-bcaten crone, having her chin and her knees meeting for age . . . i;oini; mumbling about streets, one that hath forgotten her pater noster and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head.' But denial of the reality of possession led to denial of the reality
is by a study of ideas about mndness, particular types of madness, and how to treat them Jn order to display changes in the underlying
conceptualization of the mind/body problem, and chnnsinp role.'; of revealed religion, magic, and scientific medicine. A third is bv
of the devil, and denial of the reality of the devil was an encouragement to atheism, for 'if nn devils no God.' Dr Walker suggests
that women were particularly liable to possession since it was the
them, who those patients were, and whnt treatments they were
prescribed.
only wny they could draw attention to themselves, and get the chance to preach to a lari^e audience. But in the long run the
rejection of miracles by Protestants lcd to skepticism about possession; skepticism about possession led to skepticism nbout devils; skepticism -ibout devils lcd to skepticism about witches; skepticism .ibout witches lcd to n more rational religion; and n more rational retipion opened the way to the development of early modern science. As John Aubrey remarked at the time, 'Printing and gunpowder have frightened away the fairies.'
One type of m.idncss, so-c.illcd 'pos.ses.sion' in the sixteenth ,ind early seventeenth centuries, h.is been mncfc the subject of .1 brilli.int
little book by D. P. Walker, the implic.ition.s of which are vcrv far-reaching.7 Possession was a species of mndness which could
the involuntary occupation of an individual by a devil. The marks hidden secrets, supernatural strength, and horror nt the use of sacred objects or words. Many of the possessed denounced their
neighbors as witches, which lcd to the denth of m.inv innocent
people. If fraud was not involved, the only possible explanations for such symptoms were possession by the devil, or some physical
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niimhcr of these prnctinoner.s pt'r capita was very \nry,c intk-i.'d, even by modern standnnl.s, perhaps as hifih as (ine per 250 to 400 inhabit.ints. The qunntity w,rs rlicrcforc ample, whntcvcr may be s.iicl .ihout the qunlity of the treatments pre.scribfd. In sixtccnthnnd scventccnth-ccntiiry I-'.ni;lnnd, even country people hiid someone to turn to - more dficn than n<it an iinliccnsctl pr.ictitioncr - within five miles.< 'I'hc problem for the historian is to find out about these prnctitinncrs and their p.iticnts, since the former did not normnlly keep records, and if they did they tended
to be dc.strovcd.
Richard Napicr would not have fitted easily into the world of
Samuel Pepys and Kinp Charles II. He was a product of a specific
patients themselves, nf whom this book deals only with those who Every now nnd tlicn, hnwcver. an inquiring schotnr stiimblcs ncross some unknown and rcvcnlinp cache of documents, and if he h.is
the imsinatinn to see the possibilitic.s (and the stnminn to c.irrv ni.it tlic enterprise) he stakes out his cliiim anti starts c1i^"'>K- Aboiit ten years ago. Professor Mich;icl MacDonald found one such ^old
mine - a series of cictnilcd cnsL'l-xinks of Cio,ooo con.sultntion.s over
ation but also the intellectually .imbipuou.s position of the prnctitioncr himself, the Reverend Richard Napicr.''
Nnpier was teetering unstcnctity on the cdscs between mnsic,
nstmloRV, alchemy, rflipion, nnd the cnntcmpnrnry ineclic.il plinrm;u'opcin, and was i.inccrrain in his own mind where truth nncl
efficacy lay. He was n lc.irnctl Anglic.in tlicoloRinn - a Master of Arts of the University of Oxford, nncl the parson of n rur;il pnri.sh in Buckinghamshire. F-Ic wns an nstrologcr who told lioroscopes. He was an alchcmist, a mnthcmatician, and a conjurer ot spirits,
u.sin^ an archangcl as a medium. He was one of the Inst Renaiss.incc magi, an expert in ,1 whole series of now wholly discredited but at
Galcnic, Rosicnicinn, alchcmicnl, Hermctic, cnbalistic, Ncoplntonist, and also Christian. To some contcmpomric.s he was suspect as a 'nccromanccr,' a 'conjurer,' whose activities were cliallcnRccl by the 'piss-prophcts,' the profcssionnl doctors with their urine
specimens.
women were plunged into depression by their oppressed lot as females in a patriarchal society, at the mercy of their parents or
husbands. One seventh of both sexes were disturbed by the threat of economic disaster, especially ruin and imprisonment for debt, which was an cvcr-pre.scnt menace to the small shopkeeper and
His eclectic notion of c.iusation was sonn to he tli.ssolved in the li^ht of tlic new B.icnninn scientific mcthntl, the new Ncwtnni.iii
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Those who believed themselves bewitched by a neighbor were twice the number of those disturbed by frustrated love or marital mistreatment. Indeed, a third of all Napier's mental patients
thought they were bewitched, a statistic which throws a vivid light upon the degree of bitterness and malevolence prevalent in an early modern village. Professor MacDonald is one of those who believe
that 'hatred, fear and violence were endemic in rural England before the Industrial Revolution' - a view with which I wholly concur. It
ousy, marital disputes, disappointment in love or m.irrinsc. Bereavement, however, did not loom larg; as a cause of nnsuish, presumably because it was so common. It was the cumulation of misfortunes that was too much. Take, for example, William Sroe, about whom Napier's note runs: "Much grief from time to time. Had a wife long sick who died after much physic. I-ost much cattle which died. H.id the pl.i^uf m liis house: two children dictl [.ind he] himself had it. ... Never well since.' The death of children disturbed a number of female patients, but it is noticeable that all the recorded cases arc of children over the age of four. Infants died so frequently that few parents were seriously disturbed by their loss, but young children at their most bewitchinp .igc had a better expectation of life, and developed strong bonds of mntcrnnl affection. Napier thought it a si^n of mental abnormality {f a woman 'careth not for her children. Can tnke no joy of her children.' But then she was so depressed that she was 'tempted to hanp herself.'
Frustrated love was a not uncommon cause of mental strain,
even if few rejected lovers went as far as Thomas May: 'Grief taken for a wench he loves. He sayeth if he may not have her, he will hang himself.' A significant number of the lower middle clnssc.s
a sixth of those distressed by courtship or love were frustrated in their wishes by the adults, such as a young man who was prevented by his father from marrying his lover and 'fell distracted.' Did a minority of the young fall in love but the majority obedicntly
follow the advice of their elders? We still do not know. More wcrr
tory husbands, but this may have had more to do with day-to-day
survival than with love itself.
Both the patients and their learned advisers like Napier held one thing in common with modern man. Both believed that there is no
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ripid distinction between niincf nnd hpdv, nncl that the two internet
and n.itural philosophy. By now, Kichard Napier and all his works were n hopeless anachronism, bypassed in the rush to supposed
moctcrnitv. Dr Walker and Prdfcssor MacDonnld have rediscovered nn
runneth in her hcnd. And she thinks the ticvil doth tempt licr to
do evil to herself.'13 Whether Forman himself believed in the devil
is not clear, but the huge number of Napier's patients who thought themselves bewitched is proof of how widespread was n mapical view of causation among the populntion nt larpe, N.ipicr'.s eclectic treatment, which included mnsicnl amulct.s, Chrisrinn prnycr.s,
astrological horoscopes, and Gnlcnic medicines, shows his own
iincertnintv about where the trutli lay.
of professionalism in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ,-incl the modest spread of private mndhouses. These two studies fit these changes into the changini; cultural patterns of an increasingly secular and optimistic ape. This makes much more .'.ense than
attributinp them to nn evil conspiracy of the early modern burc.iu-
cratic state nnd professional elites to enslave the multitude. Amon^ the poor, however, the old system of semimagical beliefs persisted. Bacon himself had expressed skepticism about the
efficacy of medicine, 'a science which hath been more professed than l.ibourcd, ,int1 more Inbourccl thnn ndvanced,' a point of view
In his concluding chapter. Professor MncDon.ild peers bcynncl into the late seventeenth and eishtccnth centuries, the sy,c of rlHmonopoly of trc-itmcnt by the mcciicnl profession, and of increasins care in private madhou.sc.s. He sees two intcrlockinp trends nt work. The first, stimulated by the religious excesses of the Englisli rcvolution, was a rejection by the elite of retisious cnthusia.snr. anti
which opened the way to innovations in anatomy and chemistry. The poor, however, remained wholly skeptical, and a popular
almanac for the year 1688 predicted that physicians 'would all be
worked. The theory that the devil wns at work in the possessed or
in witches was no longer regarded as credible. After the experience of the Civil War, irrational systems of belief were seen ns tlircnrs to the established social order, which the ruling classes were dctermined would never again be subject to such ratlicnl chnllcnRC. a form of madness, while dcmonic possession was treated ns mere delusion or hypocrisy." Suicide ceased to be regarded n.s a sin
busy killing sick people.' As a result of this conservatism, there emerged in the late seventeenth century a major dichotomy between elite and popular culture with respect to the efficacy of doctors and
the treatment of the insane.
Nor were the poor altogether wrong in their rejection of the new order of things. Private madliousc.s were indeed often a public
scandal, and it was not until 1774 that Parliament passed the "Madhou.sc Act' to set up a system nf licensing and inspection. Foucault is almost certainly right to believe that confinement in the
apainst the Holy Ghost, instigated by the Devil, and to be punished by burial in unconsecratecl Rround .ind seip.urc of property.
Jurymen now declared that .suicides were non compos mcnti.s 1: 'Reason' was now king, and since medicine was allegedly scientific, it was the medical profession that naturally took charge of the insane, and confined the worst cases, .iccorclinp to the prcscribctl
rules of their profession.
abuse the services of private madliouses out of personal spite, and nothing was more common in the eighteenth century in a marital
Uespite the total lack of any evidence of the practical effectiveness of curing the insane by purges, bleedinp, cmetics, and chains, professional medical theory fitted neatly into post-Rcsror.ition elite culture, compounded n.s it was of rational religion, ncoclassicism,
eighteenth century appeared to change all that; it provided the basis on which the st.itc built larger nnd more elaborate asylums. The
'moral' methods of leniency and kindlv treatment were first intro-
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century, and as a result the Victorians were convinced that the bad
old days of medical mistreatmeht of the insane in madhouscs were over. They reflected comptacently on how in the eighteenth century 'cocrsion for the outward man and rabid physicking the inward man were specifics for lu.nacy. Chains, straw, filthy solitude, darkness and starvation . . .; nothing was too wildly extravagant,
prayers, or whips. The strength of the work of Walker and MacDonald is the sophistication of their interpretations and the
close attention they pay to the sources. In their hands insanity becomes a window through which to observe fundamental changes
in the intellectual and social life of the West, as rationality slowly
nothing too mon.strously cruel, to be prescribed by mad-doctors.' Nonmedical practitioners now tried to work on the mind rather than on the body, and by gentle rather than forceful methods which was a direct challenge to the monopoly of treatment now claimed by the medical profession. The lows classicus of this great reform is the picture of Pinel striking the chains from the lunatics
at Bicctre in the middle of the Terror in Paris. Lunacy was now
took the place of faith, magic, and superstition. Whether this was a change for the better or the worse is, unfortunately, still very
much a subject of dispute.
PART II
this optimism was unjustified, and the Victoriiin asylums slid impcrceptibly back into holding-pens for persons patently incurable. Attention of the well-meaning was therefore focused on the humane
treatment of the inmates, rather than upon their cure. the sick mind, an endeavor that has had only very limited sticcess.
Today, we are back to where we were in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, restoring the mind by treating the body with chemicals instead of purges and emetics, and electric shocks instcncl
of whips and chains. Th.-inks to drup; therapy we arc also emptyinfi the asylums, and releasing their inmates once more into the streets, where they had been up to the eighteenth century, before the ^rc.il confinement began. Some aspects of tlie nineteenth-century phn.se of these dcvclnpmcnts in the treatment of madness arc illustrated in a useful series
(1) You ascribe to me the thesis that, as from 1650, a new principle emerged according to which 'madness is shameful' and "the best treatment is forcible isolation from society under management by professionally trained doctors.' This view is precisely the opposite
of that which I have set forth as the main argument of my book
and enlarged upon throuph the full five chapters of the first part. Namely, that the procedures and institutions of confinement evolved throughout the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and did not begin in 1650; that they were essentially extramedical; that the results aimed at were only partially thera-
brooding figure of Professor Foucault, whose creative, if pessimistic, imagination still dominates the field. One very serious result of the current mood of dcnipration of doctors and scientists is n downplaying of the crucial distinction between truth and falsehood. Some treatments of the insane used today seem to work; almost all used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not. It is one thing to overthrow the simplistic Whig interpretation of history
peutic. The dates, conditions and regulations of these nonmedical confinements are analyzed on pages 56-123 of my book; the limited space allotted to medical practice is analyzed on pages 124-77. Why do you not take into account these 120 pages which utterly refute
the thesis you credit me with? And why do you ascribe to me an untenable thesis, never, to my knowledge, maintained by anyone and certainty not by me?
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(2) You crcilit me witli (lie i<k'.i th.tt this was merely tlic rcsiilt of 'n conspiracy of protcssionals to sei/c- power for tlicm.st^'cs to lock people up.' This is, onrc ns-'lln' tl'lc cx''lct "ppu''itc of wli.-it I. have said.. To bcy,m with, 1 never had recourse to the notion <?t 'conspiracy' to .inatyy.e this liistoricnl phenomenon, or any other.
Moreover - and thi!> forms tlic subject matter nf mv book - I h.ivc
hidden away and at the same time exposed; both attitudes are borne
out tiv mv references.
A little more attention would have prevented you both from over-hnstily levelinp at me an ill-founded reproach, and from
attempted to show the length, tlic diversity .ind the complexity of the processes which finnlly, after a century and n hnlf or more, lcd to the scttins up of a spcciali/.cd psychi.ury .ind of ,1 boily (if
alicnists who were able to claim the exercise of medical niithtiritv within the framework of (lie institutions of confinement. WIint I
doctors to be the sole agents of such a medic.ili/.ition. Yoii nrc entirely mistaken on nil three points. Why? (3) You raise the objection that there is evidence of the contincmcnt of mndmen during the Middle Ages, as if I did not know or mention such facts. Now, I refer precisely to such accounts of
confinement as can be found and I point out that there existed, in this respect, a very o\d tradition that assumed, in j^tcr yc.irs,
another dimension; I mention n certain tiumlu'r of cdnmptfs 011 papcs 20-1 and 125-7;I also point out (pp. 161-2) tli;it, throughout the Middle Ages, madmen were sometimes lockctl up and displiiyctf like animals. Assuming that you linvc read my book, could you have copied wliat I said the better to reproach me with not hnvins
said it? Or should I believe that vou hnve not read it?
not wh.it to answer nny more than I can guess to which passage of my book you refer, since it is entirely concerned with the slow evolution from one form of confinement, intended mainly for the poor, into a confinement involvinp medical treatment. You content yourself with repeating my general thesis while twisting it into an
objection.
(4) Yet another objection on your part: madmen were not 'isolated' since tourists went to see them where they were kept in
ch.iins. Two comments:
(7) Contrary to what you claim, I never compared "the treatment of the mad' to that of lcpers. I pointed out that a certain number of disused leprosaria were employed for other purposes and in particular [for] a confinement which was, in the seventeenth and ciphecnth centuries, only very partially therapeutic.
(a) Uo you really believe that locking people up and making -in exhibition of them proves that they are not submitted to scpregation? Just tell me, fettered and howling in a yard or writhing
(8) You reproach me with having placed under the same 'conceptual umbrella' the treatment of schoolchildren, the poor, criminals
and the insane. And you emphasize the fact that the condition of the indigents has greatly improved in the last two hundred years and that children 'at least up to the 19605' are increasingly better
educated. Now,
(a) I never denied what you put forward in these last two propositions; I never even broached the subject.
made a show of in this way (pp. T6i-3). I consider these f.icts n.s
an aspect of the complex .ittitiide toward madmen: they were
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(2) I fear you have taken a considerable risk. Think of those who
h.ivc read mv book; think of those who will read it and want to
(c) Neither is the presence of criminals (often enjoyinp a special status) alongside the poor and the insane in the same places of isolation pure invention on my part. It is a fact borne out by documents I quote,, more particularly on pages 56-123 and p.ipes
414-21. Are you in a position to deny this fact and to back vour denial with convincing documents?
collate it with your review of it. Is it of no importance to you that people may believe you to be 'unconcerned with historical detail of time and place, or with risorous documentation'? (3) Don't you agree that the probity essential to any scientific work should rule out such procedures? Don't you agree that only by respecting the work and the thought of an author can one
My problem was to understand the logic of n practice n-hich could concern madmen, criminals and the poor. But which in
no way concerned children, or the nineteenth and the twentieth
centuries, as you would have the render believe.
(9) Finally, harking bnck once more to this thesis I never uphrld (according to which doctors were 'behind the great confinement of the insane'), you argue that society was anxious to 'pay for incarceration' and that there was, in this respect, an import.int social demand on the part of the family circle and the cntour.ise;
in France, the lettre de cachet, which was one of the me-ins of administrative incarceration, was more often than not dcmnndcd
then, the problem has developed, as you justly point out, into a topical question. However, doesn't the fact that, twenty years later, it gives rise to so many obvious adultcrations on the part of
someone who should have stayed cool-headed signify that the prob-
lems it has attempted to deal with are .still charged with passion?
All the more reason then for one to be, in discussion, as attentive
by the families, and confinement, even at Bicctrc, had to be paid for, in many cases. Besides you must not imapine that tt was onlv the 'well-to-do families' you mention who made such requests ,iiul were willing to pay for tlie subsequent upkeep. All in alt: nine major errors, spread out over two small columns and a bit; th.'it's a lot. I <im not in the habit of replying to criticisms as I consider the reader quite capable of putting blatant adultrrations right all by himself. However, the regard in which you are held prompts me to submit to you these few answers, which could be far more detailed. Indeed, they provide me with nn oppnrniniry to ask you a few questions. (1) The 'fidelity' you show to my book surprises me. You could
have quoted from sources other than those I refer to, mentioned
nnd as scrupulous as possible. Even when madness is restricted to ,1 subject mutter, it has somcthinR of a hlinding effect on the mind. It is for this reason I suggest we resume, amicably and in alt serenity, the debate on these problems, in as agreeable a manner
as possible t0 both sides. But first, I would appreciate a par.igraphby-parngraph coll.ition of what you have written about my book
with n'h.it I have actually written. The reader is entitled to know where the truth lies.
different facts, opened new perspectives. You have done no such thing. Out of the nine reproaches you level at me, four (numbers 3, 4, 5, and 6) consist in repeating what I said while pretending I never said it; three others (1, 2, and 8) consist in turning round, word for word, what I said and ascribinp to me the subsequent thesis which has become untenable. As for the ninth reproach. it combines, rhetorically, the two methods used throughout the
development.
2 Reply of Lawrence Stone I am sorrv thar Professor Fnucault is disturbed by my criticism of his ideas. Today he enjoys nn almost unparalleled position of intellectual clomin.incc over the interpretation of many key aspects
of the evolution of Western civilization since the seventeenth
centurv. We are none of us infallible, and Professor Foucault would surely concede that someone in his well-deserved position of pre-
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65
temperate critical scrutiny. The historian faces several problems in dcnlinp with the writings of Professor Foucault. One is that he is
not at alt easy to understand, bccau.sc of what an unkind critic has
I can venture ... in which I can lose myself." '{i A second problem is caused by the tenuous connection of stnic-
turalism to history. Even if they can be understood, the systematic structures of discourse that are alleged to underlie major intellectual
changes cannot always be made to conform to the intractable rcalities of historical evolution as revealed in the records: the facts
don't always support the theory. Thus Foucault may be superbly insightful in propounding certain brilliant conccptualization.s nboiit the eighteenth century, such as 'the great confinement,' or "the
desire to know' about sex, or 'the birth of the clinic,' or the transformation of sr"mmnr. But he may also have made mistakes,
counts. First, I did not make sufficiently clear what everyone knows, namely that his true originality lies in his structuralist mode of explanation, concerned not with such mundane matters as how men pursue self-interest, or the way in which professional and bureaucratic groups develop independent interests of their own, or even what it is they think about their work. He is concerned with structural ways of how they think, their modes of discourse, which according to him determine everything else.
The second way in which I did Professor Foucault an injustice
perhaps not fatal ones, in his chronology, typology, and causal explanations, and may be lacking hard data needed to prove his
hypotheses.
was that I failed to make it clear that I was dealing with a large international body of thought covering many disciplines, namely Foucauttism. Now it is probable that not all the ramifications of
Foucaultism meet with the approval of the master himself, although he has so far done nothing, so far as I know, to repudiate them.
It is his followers who have taken up his denial of humanitarian or Enlightenment motives behind the evolution of the moral care of the mad, or a medical approach to disease, to put forward a more sociological conspiracy theory about psychiatrists and doctors; and it is they who have taken up his concept of the great confinement in prisons, asylums, and hospitals, and added schools to the list. One can, I think, debate the extent to which an original thinker is responsible for the ramifications, or extensions, or perversions, of his work by others. Can Marx be held responsible for Marxism? Can Foucault'.s pessimistic evaluation of lunatic asylums be held to have been a factor in the recent discharpe of thousands of helpless psychiatric patients onto the pitilcss streets of New York? Dr Gerald Weissmann of the New York University School of Medicine
For example, on the basis of a small number of quotaticms, he has postulated a major shift in consciousness in the eighteenth
century, from believing that it was cruel to criminals to confine them with madmen to believing that. it was cruel to madmen to confine them with criminals. To the historian, such a shift of
mentalite would require a lot more proof than a bare handful of quotations and the fact that the two groups were indeed separated.1'' A third problem is that Foucault's generalixations lend themselves so easily to adaptation and extension, and perhaps distortion, by others. Thus his remarks about 'the Doctor as an alienatinR fipure' gave support and cncoumRcmcnt to others, like R. D. Laing in Britain and Thomas Sza.sz in America, to press their belief that institutional psychiatry is largely a conspiracy for power and prestige by a professional group with very dubious scientific crcden-
tials.16 Foucault certainly never sank to such mundane sociological explanations, but his writings lcd logically to it. Similarly tie has never mentioned schoolchildren among the confined; but a host of American and English critics of the school as a repressive institution
have drawn that conclusion from his work. Lastly, the English version of Madness and Civilization is a translation of an abridged
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67
motive to the i^reat reformers of mental treatment in the late ninetecnth century. In Madness and Civilization he denigrates Tukc,
asylum becomes 'an instrument of moral uniformity and of social denunciation' (p. 259). Foucault describes it as one of 'the parndoxes of Pinel's "philanthropic" and "liberating" enterprise, this
subjects for human medical experimentation: 'what is benevolence towards the poor is transformed into knowledge that is applicable to the rich . . .' (p. 84). 'The doctor's gaze is a very small saving in the calculated exchanges of a liberal world* (p. 85). 'Like civilization, the hospital is an artificial locus in which the transplanted disease runs the risk of losing its essential identity' (p. 17). Small wonder that such language has lcd to a host of conspiracy theories about both the medical profession and the rise of the hospital.
The main objection to this 'dominance and control' model of
even if it is innocent outside it' (p. 269). He writes that 'our philanthropy recognizes the signs of benevolence towards sickness
where there is only a condemnation of idleness' (p. 46). This stress on control, repression, and punishment has bben combined by Foucault with emphasis on the growing pow^r of 'the
medical per.sonape . . .' (p. 269) 'whose powers borrowed from science only their disguise, or at most their justification' (p. 271). 'In the patient's eyes, the doctor becomes a th.-iumaturge . . .' (p. 275). 'The doctor, as an alienating figure, remains the key to
human relationships is that is is based on an obscure structuralist theory of discourse, which may or may not be well founded.It is a model so all-embracing as to be virtually meaningless. It can include anything from using forced labor in the Gulag Archipelago to teaching children to brush their teeth. Since man is a social
animal, and since all of social life involves some form of influence,
molding, direction, or compulsion, the reduction of all social relationships to issues of power renders it almost impossible to
make the fine intellectual, moral, and material distinctions necessary for any serious evaluation of change in history.
For example, when does social control end and socialization be^in? One definition of the latter is 'a neutral concept concerned
with the objective needs of society to guide, restrain and control the members so that they generally observe accepted conventions
if necessary by force, of the views of one group upon another. For historians, it is precisely these fine distinctions which make one society at one time different from another, but Foucault's blanket
structuralist affirmation of dominance and control severely limits
which was the illness itself, has emerged into the li^ht of lansiinRC the same light, no doubt, that illuminates the 120 Journecs dc Sodome, Juliettc, and the Desastres de Soya.'w Here again we find
a denial of the Enlightenment as an advance in hum^n undcr-
neglects the near-certainty of serious differences in beliefs and aims among the so-called controllers, as well as in the methods they use. Third; it ignores the gap between intentions and results. As often
68
69
as not in history, the movers and shakers either fail in their objccrives, or the consequences turn out very differently from what they
expected, due partly to the perverse recalcitrancc of hiimnn n.iturc
1. (.-i) Madness ns shameful and so to be hidden: "the shameful promiscuity of madness' (Madness and Civilization, p. 22$);
' L'intcrncmcnt ciiche U dcraison ct trahit la honte qu'clle susdte'
Fifth, Foucnult'.s model .issumcs not only that .ill controllers seek power for the same end, but also that all tlic controlled, pivcn a free choice, would reject the mold imposed upon them. Tire idea, for example, that m.ihy of the poor might be positively anxious, of their own free will, to adopt bourgeois values and behavior for themselves and their children in order to get on in the world, or
(Folie, pp. 162-3). (b) Dating, 'the first moments of the "Confinement" . . ., that royal edict of April 27, 1656 thnt led to the creation of the Hopital General' {Madness and Civilization, pp. 46-7); 'From the creation of the Hopital General. . . until the end of the eighteenth century, the age of reason confined' (Madness and Civilization, p. 65); 'Le
classicismc a invcntc I'intcrncment'[Folie, p. 64);'. . . aussi soudain
plify the historic.il process, reduce society to two pol.irizKct groups, distort the psychology and values of the controllers, make unwarranted assumptions about their success in impo.sinp their will, underestimate the strength and independence of the culture of the supposedly controlled, and eliminate any possibility that the society, including the controlling elite, is ptur.ilistic and divided in
its objectives.-'1
fjne 1c grand Renfermement du XVII sieclc . . .' (Folie, p. 404). There is one page of random accounts of confinement of the poor in sixteenth-ccntury England, but little is drawn from it (Folie, p. 65). 2. 'A conspiracy of professionals.' This is admittedly not Professor Foucault's motive of change, but I have shown how his writings can lead, and have led, others to this conclusion. 3. Confinement of the mad in the Middle Ages: there is only one page (p. 10) about this in the English abridged edition, although more in the French. But I cannot see that even there it plays any part in Foucault's argument. I fail to understand how
one can be 'hidden away and at the same time exposed.' To my mind this is an unintelligible contradiction in terms.
I:inally, the I:oucault moilcl ignores the mornl dilcmm.i.s of society past and present. It is nt no help to us in tackling the rcnl
and difficult task of today, which is to decide which kinds of state
4. Differences between France and England: not discussed in the English edition, and only discussed in passing in the French on pp. 67-74? PP- 4^3-9^ concern Tuke and Pinel. I can find no serious discussion of the proliferation in cightecnth-ccntury Enplnncl of private madhou.ses, as opposed to French statcsupported ones (it is possible that 1 am defeated by the absence of
indexes).
intervention in personal life are justified by the social benefits accruing, and which ,irc not. Foucnult's model is useless in solvins the real dilemmas we face in dealing with such delicate moral issues
5. Exactly: but the evidence does not fully support the thesis, in
my opinion.
or rhinocero.s horn - as he can pay for, and so on. After this statement of rctractions and peneral objections, let me now turn briefly to the points of detail raised by Professor
Foucault.
6. Treatment of lepers and madmen: In Madness and Civilization, "The lepcr was removed from the world, and from the community of the Church visible . . .' (p. 6). Then leprosy disappeared, and after an interval (filled in the French version [pp. 1618] by the victims of vcncral disease), the mad were placed in some of the old leprosaria. Here 'the formulas of exclusion would be
repeated, stranpcly similar two or three centuries later. Poor vagabonds, criminals, and "(lernnged minds" would take the part played
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CRmCAL
THOUGHT
SERIES
71
by the leper' (p. 7). 'The asylum was substituted for the lazar
house. . . . The old rites of cxcommunication were revived, but in
money to the cause of the boat people, the Afghan tribesmen and the victims of General
Jaruzelski - but refused the embrace of any
Histrin de to SexuaBte
285pp.207 0700599
Tome 3, Lc Soud dc soi
284pp. 2 07 027382 2
Paris: Gallimard. 85freach. These volumes appeared m the bookshops of Paris as their author lay dying in the clinic for nervous diseases at Salpfitrifere hospital. It is
said he was stUl able to read the first reviews:
political label, including the liberalism cun-ently fashionable in French intellectual circles. Foucault's celebrity was paradoxical. If French opinion polls of the 1980s consistently rated him the most important living French
intellectual, it was not because he was associated with any doctrine or idea bearing his name, but perhaps because he assumed the prophetic mantle of the French man of letters inherited from Sartre and Aron while retaining an ironic distance from its pretensions.
thoughts in any way, except the two which I have freely admitted,
and for which I apologize. He, however, has not directed himself to the central issue of my criticism, namely his pessimistic cvaluation of Enlightenment thought, and the institutions and
imagine his macabre amusement at reading his dological approach, no body of philosophical own obituary notices and at the tide of celebrianalysis, no theory which could properly be
ty enveloping him in death. Foucault's celebrity is something of a puzzle. He himself did not court it. He was scathing about the imprisoning and self-deluding role of prophet accorded French intellectuals by their public. While he sometimes succumbed to the temptations of that role - notably in his Ulcalled his own. Those who, in the wake of his
death, called him the most important philosopher since Heidegger were surrendering their judgment to the erigendes of funereal piety. Yet scarcely any philosopher working on
the history of philosophy or historian working
on the history of institutions, social science or sexuality can avoid confronting the challenge
of Foucault's books.
Poucault's reply and Stone's riposte, The Past and Present Revisited, London, Routledge 1987, pp. 268-294.
Having devoted his intellectual career to studying how systems of ideas become systems of power, Foucault had the consistency and self-awareness to avoid making a system of power out of his own ideas. He had many
depended on negation. Against the philosophers he insisted, with Nietzsche as his inspiration, on the radical relativity of philosophical truth. In place of a philosophy of
reason, he wanted to write a history of truth, a
genealogy of the scientific discourses of the modem age which produce their own account
of what is true about sex, society and the self.
Against the historians, he insisted on the radical discontinuities in the languages in which past and present speak to one another. In the idea
Althusserians. Although he held a prestigious chair at the Collfege de France, he remained a solitary outsider in French intellectual life. He
of an "epistemic break", he sought to highlight the geological fault-lines beneath the traditions
of ideas which historians had taken as unbroken terrain.
His historical work lacked a theory of historical change: why such breaks in the languages of reason, madness, self-consdousness and so-